No sir, THEY should have explained "Thou shall not steal" to their thug of a Son.

As I said, no tears here for any of them. If you CHOSE to life the law of the jungle, you don't get to bitch when a lion eats you.

"Out of every hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." -- Hericletus, circa 500 BC

I'm not saying that they are right to react the way they did. I am saying that it's perfectly understandable that they would react the way they did, when they've just put their son in the ground.

Shrug their shouders? No. Reflect on what they, as parents, could or should have done to keep their kid out of trouble? Yes. It sucks that someone lost their life in this situation, but that's the chance you take when you commit a crime.
As far as I'm concerned, the kid endangered the guy's life by charging at him. One of them was probably going to die or get hurt very bad. Guy with gun decides it isn't going to be him. End of story.

That's quite easy to say here on a the web when it doesn't involve any one you're related to.

Yes definitely. However, it was also very easy for that kid to act like a complete little fuckbag in real life. Ergo, His parents to some extent must be held responsible (at least to some small extent) for said fuckbag's actions; whining publicly at their loss and blaming the other guy does not become them in my opinion. But again, thats very easy for me to say I'm not emotionally involved. Are you?

I'd just hope that if one of my relatives got done while acting the bollocks I would react PUBLICLY with a little more...grace. There is a lot to be said for stoicism.

For **** sake. Their kid was shot dead over a car radio, what the **** do you expect them to do?

Yes we can argue that they were lousy parents to raise a kid that gets wasted and goes out stealing ****, but that's not really the point. You want them to stoically sit there and say "Yeah, he sure was a bad one, guess he had it coming and boy was he dumb to charge at a guy holding a gun"?

That's exactly what they should be doing especially if they have other children. The whole "my baby can't do no wrong" is part of the reason he is dead. Take responsibility for it and move on.

First, he decided it was ok to steal from another what they had earned with the sweat of his own brow. Without due process of law. I always find it amusing when someone now wants to talk about the punks rights, when he himself FREELY CHOSE to live outside of those rights. He was in the very act of denying those rights to others. Simply put, "Thou shall not steal."

Having made a lifestyle choice to live outside the rules of our republic, he finally got caught by someone who was not going to put up with it. Now, did he run away? Did he wait for cops to fight the good fight later? Nope, the charged the guy with the gun. Do you think he was running up there for a group hug?

At this point, after years of bad choices, the biggest one to NOT live inside the law, Darwin took over and the law of the jungle took effect.

That's quite easy to say here on a the web when it doesn't involve any one you're related to.

It may be easy to say on the internet but in real life I have three kids so I live it everyday. If one of my kids broke into someone's house and was shot dead, there is no way I could blame that person for killing my child because I would do the exact same thing if it was one of their kids.

Like I said, it is always a tragedy when someone loses their life.

Take the gun out of the situation for a second and tell me how you would envision the situation going down. Most likely there would still be a funeral.

That's quite easy to say here on a the web when it doesn't involve any one you're related to.

http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI147639/
This is my cousin. I changed here diapers when she was little. Her father, who is also in jail, and I roomed together in college. I blame both him AND his parents for what happened. Why? Because they had the "My baby can't do no wrong" attitude that led to many many previous bad incidents including nearly getting me fired from a job.

When her dad got sentenced to 15yrs for shooting a guy* I told them it was their fault because they always bailed him out and never held him responsible for his actions. This caused a rift in the family because it was the truth. When this happened with Teah I simply said they didn't learn because it was the same behavior that led to this. No matter what they did it wasn't their fault.** When they got punished it was always other people over reacting.

*He has a Masters degree and decides it was worth throwing his life away for bootleg DVDs and cell phones!?!?

**I was somehow blamed for the shooting because I somehow got the idea in his head to carry a gun. Truth of the matter is I started carrying because of my job and the fact that I needed to have protection when making night deposits where it was a known fact that pple would stake out drop boxes and try to rob those making store deposits.